Operation Noble Lance: Barack Obama has authorized up to 300 Special Operations Forces to be deployed to Syria. It was not clear if the Americans accompanying the Turkish military had been re-assigned from other locations in northern Syria or were part of a new contingent. More here.
*** Getty Images
Getty Images
State Department Daily Briefing Secretary of State John Kerry made brief remarks to reporters on the agreement between the U.S. and Russia to bring about a ceasefire in Syria. Spokesman John Kirby then continued the daily briefing. Secretary Kerry said that if Syria did not comply with the cease-fire agreement, then the arrangement would “not go forward.” He acknowledged the doubts that still existed regarding the agreement and said he expected challenges in the days to come. He also said the plan had a chance to work. He later said that Syria was one of the “most complicated places in the world” and responded to a news report that said the U.S.-Russia plan was “flawed and full of caveats.” He concluded his statement saying he had “never seen a more complicated or entangled political, and military, sectarian, somewhat religiously over-toned issue than what exists in Syria today.
****
Fighting steadily escalating in Syria – reports of heavy combat around Damascus, Hama and Aleppo. Aid still being blocked by regime too. US Special Ops forces in Tell Abyad Syria put up US flag to show identity as they came under fire.
NYT/WASHINGTON — American Special Operations forces have arrived in northern Syria to work alongside Turkish troops fighting the Islamic State, the Pentagon said on Friday, stressing that the approximately three dozen Americans would serve in an “advise and assist” capacity.
Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said in an email that the American Special Operations forces “are accompanying Turkish and vetted Syrian opposition forces as they continue to clear territory” from the Islamic State near Jarabulus and al-Rai.
The decision to send the American forces into northern Syria with the Turkish military came last week, one American official said, shortly after a meeting between Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and President Obama during the G-20 summit meeting in China.
American officials described details of the deployment on the condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic and national security sensitivities of the mission.
****
Bloomberg: “Denying ISIL access to this critical border cuts off critical supply routes in and out of Iraq and Syria,” Major Adrian Rankine-Galloway, a Defense Department spokesman, said in a statement, using an alternate acronym for Islamic State. There are about 40 special operations troops in the operation, said a U.S. official who asked to remain anonymous because the details aren’t public.
Earlier Friday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned his Russian counterpart that the U.S. was prepared to walk away from plans to coordinate strikes unless delays in aid deliveries are resolved. The United Nations is ready to deliver the aid but says it hasn’t received the necessary permission from the Syrian government to proceed.
“Secretary Kerry expressed concerns about the repeated and unacceptable delays of humanitarian aid,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement Friday after Kerry and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke by phone. Russia must “use its influence on the Assad regime to allow UN humanitarian convoys to reach Aleppo and other areas in need,” Kirby said.
“The Secretary made clear that the United States will not establish the Joint Implementation Center with Russia unless and until the agreed terms for humanitarian access are met,” he added.
****
CBS: The fighting has stopped in Aleppo, but Syrian troops are still holding up on humanitarian aid that the city desperately needs, said United Nations officials.
Samantha Power, United States ambassador to the United Nations, blamed the Syrian regime.
But she also added that Russians had a “significant” influence and that it was “incumbent” on Moscow to deliver on Syria. The war-torn country is now in its fourth day of the U.S.-Russian cease-fire, which Secretary of State John Kerry called “a last chance to be able to hold Syria together.” Power emphasized the significance and potential impact of the deal — one she said was the first of its kind –with “this level of granularity and specificity.”
“It can be a very important deal because it can prevent the regime from flying over opposition areas, it can prevent barrel bombing, chemical attacks, the kinds of things we’ve seen the regime do for so long. It can also turn the Russians to doing what they were supposed to do all along, which was actually fight terrorists instead of civilians,” Power said.
“Don’t you believe that’s what’s happening again today in Syria?” O’Donnell asked. “Well, Syria is a very complex picture,” Power answered. “There are thousands of armed groups. The question again of what military intervention would achieve, where you would do it, how you would do it in a way where the terrorists wouldn’t be the ones to take advantage of it — this has been extremely challenging. But the idea that we have not been doing quote anything in Syria seems absurd. We’ve done everything short of waging war against the Assad regime and we are – I should note – having significant success against ISIL on the ground.”
